Taso Lagos

Interim Director, EMIS

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About

I am the interim director of the JSIS Executive Master of International Studies. My teaching career began at the University of Washington in 2000. My research focuses on both historical and modern currents as expressed in distinct personalities. My first monograph, American Zeus: The Life of Alexander Pantages, Theater Mogul (McFarland Press, 2018) sheds light on the extraordinary but forgotten life of a Greek immigrant who arrived in the United States in the 1880s and rose to become one of the wealthiest and most innovative movie theater owners in the country. His story mirrors the larger American story of a changing society in the midst of an immense wave of immigrants.

Charisma and Religious War in America looks at the same period, but within the growing Protestant movement represented by Aimee Semple McPherson and Robert “Fightin’ Bob” Shuler. In Cooking Greek/Becoming American (McFarland, 2021), I turn to my family’s Greek eatery in Seattle as a “third place” but also a “school” that taught us how to become citizens. My most recent book, The Age of Charisma (Ethics Press, 2023) returns to the familiar ground of charisma and its rise in the media age. My next book looks at the history of Greek restaurants in the U.S.